Maternal Instinct
by Azdoine
Summary: Nodoka Saotome is many things: wanna-be yamato nadeshiko, reluctant kaishakunin, and - depending on who you ask - perhaps neglectful. But the one thing she isn't is stupid. And she wants to make up for her mistakes.
1. Chapter 1

**Obligatory disclaimers: I do not own Ranma 1/2. If Ranma-chan stories aren't to your tastes, you probably won't like the conclusion of this tale. And, of course, as the premise might suggest, not all characters will remain in their canonical character interpretations.**

* * *

Ranma Saotome doesn't even remember how _young_ he was. How young he was when he realized that he wasn't normal.

Growing up, he runs with the quixotic quicksilver wind, he walks the roads of China and Japan with his father, Genma. Ranma trains every day in martial arts, each passing moment another new challenge from his father: "Everything is training," the man says sternly, summoning up a vestige of pretension that he can't live up to in real life. "Everything is training, and that means it's on _you_ , you understand? Everything is training, and you're going to get through it."

Some of what compels Ranma to obey his father is just the tradition of it all - all around him, the accepted attitude is that children must respect their parents, no matter what else. It is his duty as a son to carry on his father's legacy as a martial artist. It is his duty (one day, in the future) to provide for his father, so far as he can.

But most of what compels Ranma is cold and hard punishment, cold and hard reality. He is only a child when his father starts stealing food from him. "Everything is training," the man says. "If you can't keep your food from me than you just have to grow stronger."

Nothing more than token dissent is accepted, not really. At the end of the line, Genma's actions and words are law, because some things are just impossible - Ranma may live in a world where powerful martial artists can outstrip the speed of sound and punch through concrete as easily as cutting through styrofoam and butter, but Ranma is still just a child and Genma is the adult. There is no way Ranma can match his father, not for years and years.

Ranma loses a lot of food, over those years. And Genma becomes… well, _decadent_ might be a good way to put it. Alone on the road with his son, with absolute power over the boy, he becomes even more neglectful and slimy than he already is.

Ranma is seven or so when he's left alone in a restaurant. "Oops," Genma says. "I forgot my wallet, let me run on home and grab it. Here, my son will stay behind, so you know I'm honest," he says, before turning to Ranma. "I'm not coming back for you," he whispers. "Better get out of here on your own, boy. Everything is training."

(Ranma has to knock out one of the waiters before they let him leave unattended.)

Ranma is ten years old when he's thrown to the cats - literally. Tied up in meat, thrown in a pit with starving cats, and left to fight them back, because everything is training. And it doesn't work the first time, Ranma doesn't spontaneously learn secret cat-based martial arts: so his father does it to him again. And again. And again.

Ranma is twelve years old when his father intentionally breaks his bones in a spar, just to prove a point. He heals.

And somewhere along the way, he realizes that it just _isn't normal_. Normal boys aren't raised on the road, without regular schooling or schedule or routine or a home to come back to. Normal boys aren't beaten and starved like this as a way of literally toughening them up.

But what can he do? He's trapped by his own indecision, because he's not even sure he's willing to turn on his father completely. Genma is a bastard, but he's still Ranma's _father_ , and doesn't that just hurt? Genma hurts Ranma, but Ranma learns martial arts in the process, and how can he turn against his father now? All the abuse was done for his own good, wasn't it?

"What's so special about all of this?" Ranma asks his father one late night, staying up and watching a campfire. "Why are you so devoted to making me a 'man among men?'"

Genma snorts, pushing and pulling on the air with his breath. "The pride of being such a man should be it's own reward, boy."

But somewhere along the way, Ranma realizes that he isn't a man among men.

Well, that's not exactly true. He _is_ a man among men - he remembers to be such a man in his every interaction with the world. But on the other hand, that's exactly the problem, because he has to consciously remember to do so - it's a role he plays.

Is there even a difference, is there even a meaningful distinction? Ranma doesn't have some deeper self to reveal, because he doesn't know what he _can_ or _would_ be aside from a man among men. So obviously any person he became would just be a role. And if _everything_ is a role, then nothing is.

Besides - the pride of being a man among men is it's own reward.

* * *

Ranma is 16 years old when his simple life of training on the road comes to an end.

The decline of his traveling with Genma starts happening at Jusenkyo, the so-called Cursed Springs of China. It seems like all roads lead to Jusenkyo, in the end.

Bamboo peeks out from dozens of crystal-clear pools of water, untouched by time and the water cycle. The wooden poles emerging from the water give the place the same cast as a great bed of nails, every bamboo spur reaching up to impale someone.

Ranma and Genma balance upon the wood rods without a care in the world, ignoring the protests of the tour guide below. And that makes it worse, even - because what happens next is basically their own fault.

Genma falls into the Spring of Drowned Panda. Ranma falls into the Spring of Drowned Girl. And just like that, they're cursed to flip-flop between bodies with the touch of water.

"This is _your_ fault," Ranma gripes at her father, after she's changed into a girl. Her black hair has given way to red hair, red hair that she has to squeeze the cursed water out of, and she scowls. "All your fault, old man! You _knew_ this was going to happen, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't," Genma admits grudgingly. "But how do you think _I_ feel? I turn into a panda!"

"If you didn't know," Ranma retorts, "then you're just a damned fool. But I knew that already."

 _And_ , Ranma thinks but doesn't dare to say, _at least you're not a girl._

Because now that Ranma is half-man and half-woman, she's in limbo. Halfway to being a man among men, and halfway to being… something else. Not that she knows what else, but the mere thought of a _choice_ scares the shit out of her.

She's never had a choice before, and now that she's staring it in the eyes, it's more scary and paralyzing than freeing. She wants to go back, she wants to go back to simpler times when all there was was the prospect of being a man among men.

"Give me that kettle," she hisses, grabbing for Genma's hot water and pouring it over herself - taking temporary respite from the curse as she becomes a he again. "We have to find a cure for this thing."

"Well…" Genma trails off. "We _may_ have business back at home."

"What?"

* * *

And with that, their training trip truly comes to a screeching halt, while Genma drags Ranma back to his old family friends, the Tendos. The trip comes to a halt when Genma tells Ranma that he's being married off to one of the Tendo girls as a way to bring the Tendo and Saotome schools of martial arts together.

It's annoying, it's sickening that Ranma is being used as a tool. But what the hell is he supposed to do? He has a duty to his father, the one who taught him the Anything Goes style of martial arts, the one who raised him.

(the one who hurt him)

It's not all that bad, though. In the earliest moments of his stay at the Tendo household, he runs smack-dab into existential crisis, and maybe that's a good thing.

"I'm Akane," the youngest Tendo girl says to Ranma while she's still in her girl-form, before she's even explained the nature of her curse. "Do you want to be friends?"

And does she ever? Of course she wants to be friends, she hasn't had a real friend since she met Ukyo and Ryoga on the road, and she hasn't seen them since. So she folds like a house of cards and tries to make friends.

"I'm just glad you're a girl," Akane tells her, and it smarts just a bit. Because Ranma feels like she's a liar. Ranma isn't a girl, not really - she still thinks of herself as a man, because she has to be a man in order to think of herself as a strong martial artist who can be proud and have self-esteem. And Ranma might see Akane as a tomboy, but if Akane is a tomboy, than so is Ranma, because Ranma literally grew up as a man, and still is half-man.

It's nice making friends with Akane, even though it has to crumple like paper eventually. Eventually Ranma's gender-bending curse is revealed, and looking at the sheer _hurt_ on Akane's face, Ranma feels awful.

"I trusted you, and… and it was all based on a lie!" Akane hisses through her tears. And Ranma learns a valuable lesson that day:

No one can ever see her as a _real_ girl, not really, because eventually the truth will out. Jusenkyo doesn't offer the chance to be a girl, it just offers the chance to seem like a girl. Even now, all Ranma can do is be a man among men.

And because Ranma is terrified of the implications of choice, that's okay.

* * *

One night, Ranma - in his male form - tries to sneak out of the Tendo household, to placate the confused wanderlust in his bones by staring down the roads of Furinkan.

"You're just like Mom was, you know," Kasumi (the eldest Tendo daughter) tells him, catching him where he stands on the roof, pinning him down with her discerning gaze, and _understanding_. "She met Dad while she was traveling."

Instead of dwelling on the maybes of the road, Ranma listens to Kasumi elucidating the could-have-beens of the past, sitting with her atop the shingles.

"Dad was on a training trip out in China…" Kasumi recounts wistfully. "Mom was just… traveling. Seeing the sights. I know she was… she never did settle down, ever, until she met Dad."

"I'm sure she was a wonderful woman," Ranma replies. Something in his chest shifts uncomfortably.

"Was it worth it?" Kasumi asks. Looking into her eyes, Ranma wonders if she's asking him, or asking her mother by proxy. "Living on the road? What was that like?"

"If I knew, I would tell you," Ranma sighs. "It was worth it, I know that much, but I don't know how to begin explaining what it was like."

The bitter night air pushes and pulls against them with the wind.

"For everything that I saw…" Ranma says slowly. "Some things never changed. In the end, it seemed like it was always the same. The people were always the same, in the worst way possible."

It was always dojos and monasteries and the like. It was always Ranma and his father, never anyone else, not for long. Any human ties were severed soon after they were made.

"I'm not even sure I know how to explain," Ranma eventually concludes. "I think it was worth it. I still sort of want to travel and see the world, if I'm being honest. But… I never want to travel like _that_ again. I'm done with that, it's over."

"No more training trips?" Kasumi asks, looking at him oddly. Ranma's lips quirk up and down.

"Aw, that's not what I meant," Ranma says. The night sky seems to have enchanted him, stars skidding across the navy blue in blurs of sidereal motion. "I think it's who I travel with and how we travel, not what we travel for, that makes the difference."

"I'm not sure I understand," Kasumi shrugs. "But maybe that's okay."

"Maybe it is okay," Ranma echoes.

His breath pushes and pulls on the night air, and at the end of it all, he doesn't even care to spin out a more complex reply.

It's okay.

* * *

In a different place, at a different time, Nodoka Saotome is barely into her twenties when she makes the single worst decision of her entire life.

It's not marrying Genma; that turns out to be a mediocre decision at best, but it's still hardly the worst. It's not having a child before she's ready to care for one; that's a fairly bad decision, but it could have turned out okay and it was still far from the worst.

The worst decision of her life is letting Genma go on a training trip with her son, Ranma.

"Nodoka, listen to me…" Genma says, bringing out the not-entirely-suave charisma that charmed her to begin with. "Our son _must_ become the heir to the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts."

"I know that," Nodoka says tearfully. "I knew this would happen when I married you, and when we had Ranma. But must you start this so soon?"

Genma grits his teeth. "Nodoka! You have raised Ranma well, but the time has come for me to train him properly. You _have_ to put your maternal instinct aside, for the sake of Ranma's future."

And the sad thing is, it's almost easy to give Ranma to him. She's overwhelmed as a mother - she feels like she's drowning under it all. She _wants_ to be a good mother, but she doesn't know how. The opportunity to abdicate responsibility and give it to someone who she trusts is too tempting, and she's not a paragon of virtue.

"If you truly love your son," Genma continues, "then you must allow me to train him as I see fit. Be patient, and I will show you that this is the right thing to do."

"Okay," Nodoka says, feeling as if she's wilting. And Genma beams.

"Nodoka!" he crows. "As proof of my dedication, I swear upon my honor: I will make Ranma the greatest martial artist of his generation, and he will return as a man among men! This I swear! And if I should fail, then we shall commit seppuku together!"

Nodoka only agrees because she doesn't think there's any chance of failure on his part, and because she doesn't put any stock in the vow. And being too-far-removed from the nature of martial arts training, she doesn't understand how far Genma plans to push her son until it's too late.

She watches Genma leave with Ranma slung over his shoulder, she watches Ranma reach a hand out to her and cry, she watches them disappear down the road, and it isn't until the next day when her anxieties reawaken in her breast. It isn't until the next day when she wonders if she's going to see them again, it isn't until the next day when she regrets her decision to let them go.

She gets post from them, occasionally. At first it's wordy and verbose, if rather… waffling and vague. But over time it trails off, becoming less and less frequent, and becomes more and more sparse. Detailed letters are replaced with barely-informative postcards.

The last letter she gets informs her that Genma and Ranma have departed for a place called Jusenkyo. And when she gets no more mail for months thereafter, she fears the worst.

She researches Jusenkyo in excruciating detail - she reads the rumors of ancient cursed springs that change all those who fall into them, and she almost wonders if Ranma and Genma have been cursed, trapped in alien bodies and suffering.

But the more likely conclusion is that something terrible - something completely normal, but terrible - has happened to them. She imagines their broken bodies in shallow graves, killed during their travels, and she cries.

She cries herself to sleep, night after night, and then she stops crying because she has no more tears to shed.

She just grieves.

-but then she hears that Genma is back in Furinkan, at the Tendo household, and hope bursts into flame within her chest for the first time in a long time. Hope that she can see her son again.

And so it goes.


	2. Chapter 2

Ranma has been with the Tendos for more than a few months when he sees _it_. He sees it long after school has ended for the day, and after the sun has begun slipping down into the side of the sky, glowing red and misty with sleepy twilight.

 _It_ is nestled into a scrapbook that Kasumi left open on a side table in the middle of the house, in-between photos of Ranma fighting Tatewaki Kuno and photos of Akane managing to scrape into success at cooking. Ranma remembers both of those things very well - he remembers every little scuffle with that asshole, and he remembers every single time Akane manages to surprise him with something edible.

He kinda does treasure those times when Akane looks so happy and proud of herself, just a little. Not that he ever tells her, or anyone else, that, because it would be too fucking _embarrassing_.

What he doesn't remember and _certainly_ doesn't treasure, is the photo of him in his girl-form, in a dress. Not just a photo of him in a dress, but a photo of him in a modest dress, sitting outside and _smelling the flowers_ like a fucking _girl_.

"What the fuck?" He says, not bothering to filter his crass mouth. His fingers, half-clumsily, retrieve the photo out of the scrapbook, pulling it up to his eyes so he can take a closer look. It doesn't even look doctored.

Hesitantly, he flips the photo over in his fingers, noting the information stamped into the back, the date marked down in black ink - Nabiki's handwriting, that of the middle Tendo child.

He scowls, sitting up from the table and flipping the photo over again. Without thinking, his legs carry him to Nabiki's room, and he throws open the door without even knocking.

"'biks! What the hell is this?" He growls, watching Nabiki pull off her headphones and glare at him, a smirk curling across her lips as she takes note of the photograph he's holding in white hands.

"That'll be ten thousand yen if you want to know," she drawls carelessly, kicking off of her bedspread and coming to stand in front of him.

"One thousand, _at best_ ," he retorts. "This is obviously _your_ creation, whatever it is, so don't you go extortin' me for it."

Nabiki smirks. "Fine, one thousand," she says, not even trying to haggle with him. Ranma _knows_ that Nabiki is an exploitative jerk, but she doesn't always try to suck his wallet dry. Sometimes he thinks that's her way of showing she cares about him.

Then he gets blackmailed into doing a modeling gig in his girl-form by her, and he realizes that no, she doesn't quite care - that much.

"You're wrong, though," Nabiki corrects him after he's paid her sum, infinitely smug. "This isn't my 'creation' at all. I just took the picture."

Ranma raises an eyebrow. "Right. Because I go around happily wearing pretty dresses."

He doesn't, in his boy-form or his girl-form.

"Not normally, no," Nabiki snickers, plucking the photo out of his fingers. "But I guess you don't remember - there was this one time when you hit your head."

Ranma snorts. "Are you serious? You're saying I got clobbered and started wearing dresses."

That's not even how brain damage works - he has experience with brain damage, after all. He knows this shit.

"Yup!" Nabiki says delightedly, popping the 'p' with great satisfaction. "You hit your head again later, and it sent you back to normal. I'm kinda surprised you never remembered that it happened, but it's all the better for me, I guess."

"Better for you?" Ranma splutters.

"Yeah," Nabiki replies. "I made a _lot_ of money selling pics of you, ya know."

"Nabiki…" Ranma hisses, grabbing the photo back and crumpling it up. "That is _such_ bull, and you know it. I don't-"

( _-want to be that kind of girl, brain damage or no_ )

"-do that kind of girly stuff, brain damage or no."

And he doesn't, he wouldn't, he wouldn't act like such a pansy weak fuck, smelling the goddamn roses. Roses smell like crap, anyways, as far as he's concerned, and he _obviously_ doesn't feel bitter about it or anything. No, he's emotionally well adjusted, yes sir!

He takes a deep breath in and out, slowing down his speeding-up heart rate.

"And why did Kasumi grab this picture of yours, anyways?" Ranma hisses. "She's not the type to mock me-"

"She wanted it because you were smiling," Nabiki says, cutting him off.

His heart sinks slightly, and he stops gripping the ruin of the photograph, looking down and unfolding it with his thumb.

He _is_ smiling in the photo, with his girl-form's nose hovering over the flowers.

He _never_ smiles like that in his girl-form.

(he never smiles like that in his boy-form, either)

"...oh," he murmurs, the wind taken out of his sails and the air ripped from his lungs.

"Yeah," Nabiki chuckles. "Believe it or not, it happened, and Kasumi wanted to remember that smile fondly, I guess."

And that itches at Ranma, knowing that Kasumi made a memento of Ranma out of his right mind, but he's not completely stupid. He knows… well, he doesn't know. But he _thinks_ he understands, just a bit, the way that you can get invested in someone who doesn't exist (someone who will never exist, no matter how much you might want them to), the way that you can get invested in a facet of a curse.

Kasumi isn't the first one to have done it, but she's obviously much sappier about it than anyone else. And he can't fault that, no matter how much he might want to.

Stupid of him.

"Also," Nabiki snickers, "you owe her for another copy of that photo you just ruined."

Ranma sighs and digs out another handful of yen.

* * *

Sometimes, Ranma thinks of his mother.

He doesn't remember her well, or really at all. Sometimes, he has dreams - running through gardens to help an older woman with planting flowers, sitting in her arms as she reads books he doesn't understand, and the like. Stupid mother-son bonding activities (and if he's being honest, mother-son wish fulfillment). It's probably just something he made up to make himself feel better, because there's no way he can actually remember who his mother was.

No, his mother is probably dead. He knows it as surely as he can know anything - which isn't very surely at all, when so much in his life lies in flux and the only things he can be sure of are ephemeral social ties. He can be more sure of his _engagements_ than of his _sex_ , and how fucked up is that?

Never mind about that, though. His mother is probably dead, and was probably some awful woman to boot. A more lovely woman would never have ended up with a man like his father, Ranma reasons, and the woman in question must have been _truly_ horrible for his father to be so unwilling to talk about her.

Genma hasn't talked of Ranma's mother once, after all, and that's not for a lack of trying to broach the subject on Ranma's part.

So Ranma is alone right now. Poor Ranma. He could just about cry himself a river (not).

After all, he doesn't need a river, because there's already a river right next to him. A low-slung drainage canal dug into the earth, walled off by fences.

 _"Everything is training, boy-"_

Ranma walks along the top of the thin metal fences, just like he had always been taught, his shitty shoes padding against the wire lattice.

He thinks back to the late Kimiko Tendo, the mother of the Tendo girls, and he can't help but feel cheated on some level. Akane, Nabiki, Kasumi - they all at least have a grave to come back to. He doesn't. He can't lay flowers at some headstone, year after year, because he doesn't even know where his mother is. There's no fucking _closure_.

 _"You're just like Mom was, you know-"_

It itches, like the itchy feet that give him his wanderlust. It itches, like the itchy bones that seem so _wrong_ sometimes, the itchy bones he ignores and pretends he doesn't have. He just wants some fucking closure, so he could shed his tears and get on with going around in circles (circles down a drain). He won't get it, he's sure.

He's so tied up with denial of grief that he doesn't even notice the fence give way under his feet, dumping him into the drainage canal, into the freezing water that triggers his gender-bending curse. And it's infinitely typical - life seeming to arrange itself into a perfect storm at every turn, so that he can be drenched in cold water and become a she. She's used to it.

"Fucking _hell_ …" Ranma growls, getting up in the knee-deep trench. "Can't a guy even _mope-?_ No, scratch that, I don't mope."

With a burst of speed, she leaps out of the canal, landing at the lip, where the fence had fallen over, and she comes to rest right next to a bemused-looking woman, with extremely dark red hair, brown eyes and fairly formal wear.

"I hope I'm not being impolite…" the woman murmurs, staring at Ranma. "But weren't you black-haired just a moment ago?"

Ranma freezes.

"It must have been a trick of the light," Ranma eventually says, lying through her teeth. She's hardly in the mood to explain her curse.

"Must have been," the woman shrugs. "Or maybe I'm getting old. Either way, could you humor me, and tell me where I can find the Tendo household?"

Ranma freezes for the second time in as many minutes. "You wanna see the Tendos? I can show you where they are, easy. I'm-"

( _living with them_ )

"-staying with them for now," Ranma explains, feeling vaguely proud despite the fact that she's done nothing remarkable at all.

"Oh, are you?" the woman asks curiously. One of the corners of her mouth lilts up into a lopsided smile. "How fortuitous."

"Come on," Ranma says. "I'm heading home anyways, so do you want to come with me? They're just a block or two away."

"I think," the woman says, still smiling like the fucking Mona Lisa, "I would like nothing more."


	3. Chapter 3

_Another time, another place-_

Sometimes, Ranma wonders if it would just be for the best to give up on curing himself of his curse, and give up on being a man.

It's not because he likes his curse, because he doesn't, he has to tell himself that all of the time. It's too incongruous, it goes against the principle of who Ranma wants to be, and wants to want to be, and who he wants to want to want to be, ad infinitum. Even if he did like the curse, it wouldn't be the reason why he considers giving up on a cure.

It's just… the entropy of the thing. He lives in a world where cold water is more common than warm water, so it's a constant uphill struggle just to be someone who he can consider a man among men. And even if he was able to get his hands on some Spring of Drowned Man water, there's no guarantee that the curses wouldn't mix together, leaving him _truly_ trapped in-between sexes.

It would just be such a fucking relief to stop being Sisyphus, and start getting on his life, such as he even has a life to begin with (he doesn't have much of one, but he treasures it anyways).

But he can't. He just can't. He's too invested in being who his father wants him to be.

And he knows his father doesn't deserve that kind of loyalty, but he gives it anyways, in order to defend what his father has given him - Genma had given him something to be proud of.

And he knows his father is a liar - if he would use his son as a tool of duplicity, then anything else, like the idea that being a man among men is honorable, would be suspect as well. But Ranma doesn't look too deeply into the possibilities of lies, because he has to defend what his father has given him.

In truth, it's less about loyalty and honoring his father, and more about defending himself from having the rug pulled out from under his feet.

It's dishonorable, framing this self-preservation as loyalty to his father, and Ranma knows it. But he doesn't have anything else, save for his doubts. If he doesn't have the prospect of being a man among men, then what the hell does he have? Nothing. His entire life would be nothing without that, it feels like. And he's a slave to that feeling, that he has to keep that cornerstone of masculinity close to his chest, even when all else fails.

So when Ranma wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, dreaming of a fugue state, he knows that something is wrong with him.

 _"This isn't you, Ranma!"_

The next morning comes after the nightmare and all Ranma can do is find Akane, bustling around in the kitchen and trying to be a cook again. He watches, resisting the urge to step in, because he knows that he's just as bad at cooking as she is. A life on the road does not lend itself to delicacy.

"Butt out, Ranma, I'm kind of busy here," Akane mumbles, the bags under her eyes weighed down by iron filings.

"It can't wait, Akane, this is serious," Ranma shoots back. And Akane turns down the heat on the stove, leaving the cereal flakes to simmer in milk. "Nabiki said some weird things a few days ago."

"Nabiki _always_ says weird things, Ranma. There's nothing serious about that," Akane says, her eyes tracking the egg timer on the counter.

"She said that I hit my head on a rock and turned into a girly-girl. Did that really happen?"

Akane doesn't say anything for several seconds, and the toast in the toaster begins to burn - not because it's part of her plan, but because she's honestly taken aback and neglecting her task.

"I think everyone but the perverts at school would rather forget that ever happened, Ranma," she says bitterly.

"So it _did_ happen," Ranma sighs, feeling closure settle over him with finality. "Figures. And none of you ever told me about it?"

"Didn't you just hear me?" Akane asks. "No one wants to remember it. Let alone explain it happened to you, mister macho man."

Ranma watches as Akane pulls out the fire extinguisher, leaning against the refrigerator.

"Was it really so bad?" Ranma says, feeling more torn than he expected to be. "I thought you wished that I had been a girl."

"Very funny, Ranma," Akane shoots back darkly. "You didn't just become a girl, you became… someone else."

"Oh, well, I'm touched to think you care about me," Ranma mutters sarcastically.

"Shut it, or I'll make you eat some of this," Akane says.

He doesn't need to be compelled to eat it, in the end. He's irrational that way, when it comes to Akane.

* * *

 _Another time, another place-_

The streets of Furinkan are flush with the heat of the faded sun, swollen with the warmth of a muggy twilight. The city, like the people therein, is beginning to slumber, letting out a few last gasps before it is dragged through the wall of sleep. Yet even these sounds are swallowed up by the black asphalt.

Neither Nodoka nor the small red-haired girl escorting her to the Tendos know how to broach the silence between them - no small talk seeming worth the disruption of their comfortable quiet. Their feet pad against the roads, and Nodoka idly imagines how well Ranma knows that rhythm, pounding in time with a heartbeat.

Finally, a gate looms in the distance. The red-haired girl quickens her pace, running to the latch and throwing it open without fanfare. A sign of her own familiarity, perhaps, or of her own lack of decorum.

"Hey pops! I'm home, and I brought a guest!"

There's a splash of water against flesh and wood, the sound of sliding doors opening and closing, a bustle of feet-

"Growf!"

And then a panda rips the girl off of her feet, dragging her into the home at nigh-apocalyptic speed. It's all poor confused Nodoka can do to follow after, stepping through the open gate (which is still swinging in the wind).

"Gyah! What the hell-!? You-! Get off of me-!" The girl screams from the distance, her voice echoing through the house before going muffled.

A small throng - as small as any throng can be - loiters around the porch, examining Nodoka with not enough subtlety and too much curiosity.

There's nothing to do with a stranger other than introduce yourself, of course, so Nodoka loosens her posture slightly, doing her best to smile. "Hello, I'm Nodoka Saotome."

"Welcome to our home," Soun Tendo says carefully, already unknowingly navigating metaphorical minefields. "I am Soun Tendo and these are my daughters. How can I help you tonight, Miss Saotome?"

 _Right to business, then, eh?_

Nodoka smiles thinly, and the light of it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "Hello. I normally don't put any stock in gossip, but, well… I heard rumors that Genma Saotome, my poor husband, and our son were staying here with you. Do you know anything about that?"

Akane shifts uncomfortably. Soun turns back to the door behind him, where the Panda looms imposingly, shaking it's head at a breakneck pace.

"I'm afraid to say that while they have been living with us…" Soun fumbles with the words. "They… just went on a training trip! Yes, they went on a training trip, and they won't return for a while yet."

There's a sound of struggling from down the hall. No-one pays attention to it, least of all Nodoka, because although the news is disappointing to her, it's still the best she's heard of her family in months.

The Tendo girls look at each other, at a loss for words, before Kasumi speaks up. "Ah… Miss Saotome… have you really been alone all this time, with Mister Saotome and Ranma on the road?"

"The way they talked about you, you might as well have been dead." Nabiki said bluntly. Akane kicks her shin from aside.

"Well, I suppose it's true," Nodoka admits, the memories practically spilling from her eyes. "Yes, I have been completely alone since Genma took Ranma away with him."

And Nabiki, with more kindness than honestly expected from her, manages to pry the story out of Nodoka in pieces, fits and spurts.

"Perhaps it was foolish of me to let Genma leave for so long…" Nodoka reflects. "But I married an honorable man, and he made a promise to me."

The very idea of a promise is irrational, she knows - even if you hold to your oaths with all the force you can muster, there's nothing binding reality and providence to play along with your agreement. But at the time, it had seemed like such an aegis of protection. The follies of a young woman, remembered years later by an old woman full of regret.

Again, from down the hall, there's a struggle, and then the sound of snapping ropes.

"Ha! I knew it, old man, you couldn't hold me with this even if you could tie a knot to save your fucking life!"

The girl rushes back in, engaging the panda with ever fiber of her being and knocking it to the floor with a breakneck kick.

And it's all Nodoka can do not to laugh. The scene before her is hardly funny - not even to her dark comedic senses. She doesn't like animal abuse, which the scene certainly seems to be. Yet it's another way in which the younger red-haired woman reminds her of _herself_ , young and naive.

Nodoka had a pet, once upon a time, before… well, before. Nodoka was a tomboy, too, once upon a time, before she cleaned up her act.

Ghosts of the past. Nodoka cracks another crooked smile. "You know, young lady, you probably shouldn't mistreat your pet like that, and you shouldn't be using such poor language, either."

The girl turns her head up to face Nodoka, blushing furiously. "What!?"

Nabiki saves the girl in the nick of time though, not even asking for anything in return. "So, Auntie Saotome, you were saying something about a promise?"

"Yes, I suppose I was," Nodoka sighs. "You see, Genma told me before he left that if he failed to raise my son as a man among men by the time he returned, then he and Ranma would commit ritual seppuku."

The red haired girl seems to turn a dozen colors at once - white with fear, red with scandalized embarrassment, purple with rage, green with sickness - and then she stares down at the panda under her. It looks almost bashful.

"You!" she hisses, grabbing it by the scruff of it's neck and dragging it down the hall. The sound of a sliding door sounds out again.

Opening and closing.

"Is it something I said?" Nodoka asks.

And Nabiki drops her head into her hands, beleaguered by all the world's _idiocy_.


	4. Chapter 4

"I don't believe this."

Ranma throws the panda she calls her father against the wall, her voice an infuriated whisper that rings out louder than any scream could manage.

"No, I _can't believe_ this. I don't _want_ to believe this. How could - what the hell is wrong with you, pops!?"

The panda at least has the grace to look vaguely ashamed. Ranma paces up and down, her body a pendulum in the side room where they've found themselves.

 _It was the only way I could convince her to let us go on the training trip. She wanted an assurance that I would raise you properly._

Ranma rips the sign out of her father's hands, tossing it to the side. It flies out the window, crashing through the glass. Neither of them pay attention to it.

"So this whole fucking time, you raised me as a man among men so you could satisfy mom. You satisfied mom so you could teach me martial arts the way you wanted."

The panda nods, satisfied with the train of thought.

And Ranma stifles a scream. "This whole time, you said that I was learning martial arts so that I would be a man among men!"

From the outside, it's so fucking _arbitrary._

Learn martial arts to be a man among men. Be a man among men to satisfy Ranma's mother. Satisfy Ranma's mother to learn martial arts. It's circular, going nowhere, it just feels like a huge lie, this amalgamation of pretense which supports Ranma's lifestyle. Ranma feels vaguely used and she doesn't understand why.

The panda shrugs, not seeing the point of Ranma's interrogation.

"And you! You always - you always told me off whenever I let Akane push me around-! And you, all this time, you and Mom-! She fucking has a katana to your neck! Our necks!"

Ranma had started hyperventilating somewhere along the way, gritting her teeth.

"You let me believe that Mom was dead this whole time!" Ranma spits. "You, you…"

The panda gets up and walks away, shrugging off Ranma's pointed remarks.

"You made me a man among men so that I could learn martial arts. Why the hell was my learning martial arts so important to you!? Was it just so I could marry in with the Tendos? To do what you couldn't, for the school of Anything Goes!?"

The panda doesn't respond with sign or with word. It doesn't need to - Ranma understands.

She's been made into a tool. Her whole life, she was taught to be a man among men, as a point of personal pride, an end in itself. But now she understands it was all just a means to an end. It was all a lie, it was all a fraud, it feels too big to even wrap her head around.

And if Ranma even plays along with this nonsense, what does that make her? Is it the right thing to do, playing along for her duties to her parents? Is it the wrong thing to do, marking her as an accessory to her own victimization?

How can she even call herself a victim? She's not a victim of _anything_. She can't actually be a victim, it's monumentally impossible to be anything _but_ someone in control, just on the principle of the thing. And even if she _could_ be the victim, this situation doesn't count as victimization. That's what she tells herself.

She tells herself a lot of things.

And even though she doesn't _know_ what this means - what _can_ it mean? - she still lashes out at the _implications_.

She catches up to the retreating panda, and slugs him in the face.

It's not the first time that Ranma has engaged in violence with her father; far from it. She beats up her father every other day in a spar. She beats up her father whenever he physically slights her (which happens often; as soon as she was able, she beat him up every time he tried to steal her food, and a few more times for good measure).

It's not the first time that Ranma has beaten someone up for an emotional slight; far from it. She lives in Furinkan, where every other martial artist is a chronically violent asshole with a talent for trying to make Ranma suffer.

But it's the first time she's beaten her father up for a purely _emotional_ hurt. Every other punch and kick had some veneer of physical pain behind it, some kind of retribution for physical neglect. Not this. This attack comes from some deeper place that she doesn't look at.

She can barely even believe she's done it by the time the panda punches back, knocking her into the wall.

It feels good, getting some catharsis out with her fists.

And she hates that.

* * *

Nodoka is knee-deep in tissues, slugging back cup after cup of tea ("For the nerves," Kasumi says sweetly) by the time that the red-haired girl returns, the panda trailing behind her and grumbling furiously.

"The sink in the bathroom is busted," she growls out bitterly. "No hot water."

"Well…" Soun sighs, wiping sweat away from his forehead. "I believe a certain panda may have broken the water heater."

"Of course he did," the red haired girl growls. "Why wouldn't he have? Stupid."

She sits down at the table across from Nodoka with a _thump_ , staring almost longingly before turning away.

"Oh? What is the panda doing with the water heater?" Nodoka asks, cocking her head to the side and clearing away the last of her tears.

The red haired girl snorts. Indecision flickers across her face.

"...he's very smart," she whispers. "For a panda, that is. He would make a pretty stupid human."

 _Hey!_

"I can see that," Nodoka says, looking at the sign the panda brandishes with the full force of righteous indignation. "I never knew that pandas could be so intelligent."

"I suppose they can," Soun says awkwardly, coaxing her away from the topic. She lets herself be led along, because she doesn't know _what_ to think.

"What's his name, young lady?" Nodoka asks of the red-haired girl. "Actually, for that matter, what's your name?"

The red-haired girl laughs bitterly, a private joke no-one else understands. "He doesn't need a name. He knows when we're talking to him."

"...I see." Nodoka says, although she doesn't see at all. "And… you? What's your name?"

"I'm Ran…" something vulnerable flickers in her eyes again. "Ranko. I'm just a family friend, visiting the Tendos for now."

"Hm."

Nodoka looks down at the last of the scalding hot tea in her cup, poured from the kettle on the table. Ranko is staring at the kettle, now, not at her.

The final dregs of Nodoka's tea go down her throat.

"Look at me, whining about a son I thought was dead just a week ago," she whispers. "This is the best news I've heard, really."

Ranko flinches visibly.

"I… I should go," Nodoka says shakily. But-

"Stay!"

"Stay!"

Ranko and Akane both turn to face each other, embarrassed by their unanimous declaration. Akane is the first to shrug it off.

"Listen, Ranma will be back in just a few days," Akane says, almost too smoothly. "You can stay with us, in the meantime, if you would like."

Nabiki does her best to suppress a shit-eating grin while Soun chokes on his own cup of tea.

"I know I would be happy to have you here," Kasumi says.

And Ranko seems to struggle with herself for several seconds.

"Ranma tells me everything. I can tell you about him, if you want?"

With an incentive like that, how can Nodoka refuse?


End file.
